D.M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison, Clarinet performance
M. M., University of Akron, Performance
B. M., DePaul University

Background

Clarinetist Rose Sperrazza maintains an active schedule as a performer and teacher. She is a tenured Associate Professor of Music at Northeastern Illinois where she regularly appears as a soloist and chamber musician. She recently received an Excellence Award from Northeastern for her Creative Activities, primarily as a performing artist. Sperrazza has formerly been on the faculties of Harper College and the Sherwood Conservatory of Music. As a graduate teaching assistant she also taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Locally she has appeared in chamber ensembles featured at the Merit School of Music’s LIVE FROM GOTTLEIB and on several WFMT live broadcasts including performances with the Cassatt String Quartet, Quintet Attacca, the Chicago Clarinet Ensemble, and CUBE. She also performed in a broadcast on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Sunday Afternoon Live from the Elvehjem.”

As a soloist, Rose has been featured at International Clarinet Conventions in Tokyo, Japan, College Park, Maryland, and in Salt Lake City, Utah. More recently she performed at Iowa Clarinet Day where she played Imprevu pour Clarinette Seule, a work composed for her by Edward Yadzinski - also the subject of her dissertation. In April of 2012, Sperrazza was featured as a soloist with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra where she performed Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, K. 622 in Preston Bradley Hall, and again at Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago.

Other performing credits include orchestral work with the Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Madison Opera Orchestra, Light Opera Works Orchestra, the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, the Lincolnwood Chamber Orchestra and the New Philharmonic Orchestra.

Sperrazza's primary teachers were William Gasbarro, Larry Combs, David Bell, and Linda Bartley. She is the founder and Artistic Director of the Chicago Clarinet Ensemble, which has commissioned numerous works by composers including Eric Mandat, Leo Schwartz, Shelley Foster Gurin, Larry Axelrod, Jeff Kowalkowski, and Jorge Montilla.